J Royal Naval Medical Service 2010, 96.1 45-53 History Watching over Jack: Alexander Bryson, 1802-1869 J V S Wickenden Introduction Little is known about Alexander Bryson’s In an earlier article, Doing it bY the book: What early schooling. The ODNB [Mills, 2004] states the books in the Historic Collections can tell us that his professional education began at about naVal medicine in the nineteenth centurY Edinburgh: however, neither Edinburgh’s [Wickenden, 2007] the name of Alexander University, Royal College of Physicians, nor Bryson appears frequently as a source of Royal College of Surgeons have any record of information. All his books are held in the Historic him. There may be some confusion with Collections library of the Institute of Naval another Alexander Bryson (1816–1866), a Medicine, and while cataloguing – and reading – geologist and chemist from Edinburgh. them, I found myself attracted to the style of his Alexander Duncan records that Bryson was writing and the fearlessness of his invective. educated in Glasgow, and became a licentiate I was also intrigued by the contrast of that Faculty (now the Royal College) in 1825 between the man whose writing could express [Duncan, 1896]: his signature appears in the such passion, “this estimable gentleman” 1824 matriculation album for Glasgow according to the British Medical Journal University. His older brother Robert was 30 in [Hutchinson, 1869], and the chilly nonentity this year, and it is tempting to think that he who emerges from the brief article in the may have put up the money to pay the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography university’s fees. (ODNB). The present paper attempts, Bryson’s studies entailed attendance at two accordingly, a fuller assessment of Alexander courses of lectures on anatomy, one in the Bryson, trying to flesh out the story of a man practice of physic (i.e., medicine), one in who, while no unsung hero (certainly more chemistry, one in materia medica, and one in unsung than heroic), seems to have fallen into surgery, with six months of hospital work and undeserved oblivion. I am not medically at least three months’ practical pharmacy. In trained, and any medical errors are mine 1827 Glasgow University awarded him an MD. entirely. He began his career in the Royal Navy early in the same year, perhaps even before the award Early life and career of his MD was formalised, when on 13 Alexander Bryson was born on 5 April 1802 February 1827, two months before his 25th at Houston in Renfrewshire, to James Bryson birthday, he joined the Royal Naval Hospital and Margaret Barr, married since 1785. An older Haslar as a hospital mate. brother, Robert, was born in 1795, and the IGI (International Genealogical Index) records five Sea service other brothers, of whom at least three died in On 11 October he was appointed infancy. Robert married in 1821, started a family assistant surgeon to HMS Magnificent, the and set up as a cotton broker in Glasgow, with receiving ship for Royal Naval Hospital some success to judge by the increasing size of Jamaica. He was aboard Magnificent for just his household in the Scottish censuses. over a year before being appointed assistant 45 46 J Royal Naval Medical Service 2010, Vol 96.1 surgeon to RNH Jamaica itself in January Good Hope and the West Africa station, after 1829. which he was rewarded with promotion to After a year he made the voyage home surgeon, and a four-year stint in home waters again, only to join HMS Dryad on 27 May 1830: with the paddle-sloop HMS Salamander at the first of four eventual postings to the African Woolwich. station for duty on the anti-slavery squadron. On 28 June 1831 he moved directly from HMS Convict ship surgeon Dryad (5th rate) to HMS Atholl (6th rate), on the In 1841 he was off again for six months to the same station. This was effectively a promotion, West Africa station in HMS Madagascar, as Bryson was now listed Acting Surgeon, another 5th-rate, followed by a posting as which suggests that Atholl’s own surgeon had Surgeon Superintendent aboard the Marquis of died or been invalided home. Bryson’s Medical Hastings, a convict ship bound for Hobart Town Officer’s Journal for this voyage survives in the in what was then Van Diemen’s Land National Archive [ADM 101/88/3], recording (Tasmania). Bryson’s Medical Officer’s Journal cases of fever, “neurosis”, cachexia (weight loss for this voyage has also survived, and can be and general debility) and miscellaneous skin consulted. [ADM 101/50/6]. At the end of the conditions and parasitic infections. case studies is to be read: There are traces already in this journal of a “The folloWing are part of a section of the typically Brysonian prose style, and also of his Prisoners put under treatment according to very real sense – evident in the description of the directions of the Inspector General Sir the effects of mercury, too long to give in its William Burnett … to trY the relatiVe effects entirety – of there being a patient, not an of Lemon Juice, Citric Acid and Nitrate of experiment, on the other end of the medical Potash in the cure of scurVY ”. procedure: James Lind’s clinical trial on cures for “[W]ho can saY [mercurY] is harmless that scurvy aboard HMS Salisbury in 1747 is well has seen a patient … doomed to languish tWo known, but this is ninety-five years later, and or three or four Weeks under its influence … It forty-seven years after lemon juice was made is … to be hoped that the daYs of mercurY Admiralty issue. Bryson labelled his three used as a specific in inflammatorY feVer are groups (nine men each) Divisions 1, 2 and 3, fast draWing to an end … UnfortunatelY for and gave each group a different potential cure. medical science its most strenuous adVocates By coincidence I had been contacted, haVe hitherto been unable to eXplain earlier in 2009, by Dr Katherine Foxhall, of satisfactorilY the real nature of the benifits [sic] Manchester University. Chapter 4 of her PhD theY eXpect to result from its use – nor can thesis [Foxhall, 2008] deals with precisely this theY define its action .” subject. I extract four quotations: Bryson was more restrained than the average surgeon of that time when it came to 1. “The reneWed interest of the naVY in bleeding his patients: “ [Venesection] is testing Various remedies for scurVY in the certainlY of the greatest utilitY, but onlY When nineteenth centurY appear to stem from a emploYed With due regard to consequent report bY Charles Cameron, a conVict ship debilitY ”. Nor did he ignore the latest drugs. surgeon Who in 1829 described the “The sulphate of quinine … [is] of great ‘almost miraculous’ effects of the efficacY benifit [sic], and materiallY assist[s] … in of an ‘old remedY’ first recommended bY preVenting debilitating paroXYsms of feVer ”. another naVal surgeon in 1795. In this Home again from Africa in May 1832, treatise, Dr Paterson had described the Bryson was posted in quick succession to two ‘eXtraordinarY effect of a solution of nitre 1st-rates: HMS San Josef, guard ship at in common Vinegar in restoring aboVe Plymouth, and HMS Castor at Chatham. He eightY seamen from the scurVY’. The then joined the new brig-sloop Griffon at AdmiraltY enthusiasticallY receiVed Chatham for a four-year posting to the Cape of Cameron’s report, and proposed that tWo Watching over Jack: Alexander Bryson, 1802-1869 47 tons of nitrate of potash should be in Nitrate of potash either gave no evidence of a future be supplied for eVerY 100 men on cure or was positively injurious. The same conVict ships’. This seemed to solVe an conclusions are repeated by Armstrong in his ongoing concern about the medical 1858 book, probably influenced by the two efficacY, but more importantlY the articles by Bryson in the Medical Tmes which ‘unnecessarY eXpenditure’ of issuing Armstrong cites [Armstrong, 1858, p.101] lemon juice at sea .” Between 3 July 1843, when Bryson’s service on the Marquis of Hastings ended, and 2. “BY the 1840s, the personal interest in his next posting on 9 January 1845, there is a scurVY that some surgeons had displaYed longer gap in the record than usual. At that deVeloped into a centrallY mandated time naval surgeons were placed on half-pay eXperiment on thousands of male as soon as they were paid off (unlike army conVicts .” surgeons who were always on full pay), and a long gap could drain their finances 3. “Of the fiftY-three conVict surgeons that considerably; in addition, time on half-pay did the NaVY supplied With scurVY remedies not count as time served towards promotion. betWeen 1840 and 1844 eleVen specificallY reported their opinions, and a HMS Eclair and shore service further thirteen journals proVided eVidence Bryson would have spent some of this time on of scurVY during the VoYage. ” the voyage home from Australia. En route, perhaps for the first time, he came across 4. “Surgeon McKecknie on the LaYton felt HMS Eclair. She had left England in April 1844 there Was ‘little difference betWeen citric for anti-slavery duty off West Africa: by the acid and nitrate Potass [but both Were] time she returned to the waters off preferable to Lime Juice.’ In contrast, Southampton in September 1845, nearly half BrYson declared nitrate of potass her crew had died of yellow fever; more, ‘objectionable ’.” including her second replacement surgeon Sidney Bernard, were still to die. The House of As we now know, lemon juice contains Commons Parliamentary Paper 125, March ascorbic (antiscorbutic) acid, or vitamin C, and 1846, is a Return of officers and men Who does cure scurvy.